WIENER

For many people living outside the US, or even New York, our first introduction to Congressman Anthony Wiener was when he accidentally tweeted a picture of his bulging underpants to the masses, placing his apparently glittering political career in jeopardy. This prompted much juvenile giggling on account of his name.  Later, vaguely, one recollects him running for Mayor before yet another sexting scandal brings him down in flames.  Again, it's easy to mock - and mock the late night TV talk shows did.  How could someone so bright, so politically savvy, do something so ridiculously stupid not once, but twice?  But until this fascinating documentary was released, I'd never paused to really interrogate the man's psyche or to count the deep toll it took on his family and political supporters.

The directors - Josh Kriegman and Elyse Steinberg - were invited by Wiener to document his run for mayor once the dust had settled on the initial scandal. He's firmly marketing himself as a transformed man, and central to that is his beautiful and intelligent wife Huma Abedin - herself a top political aide to Hillary Clinton - and their cute young son.  The cameras are granted hugely intimate access of the couple raising funds, on the campaign trail, committed to their marriage, and refusing to let a moment's madness deny the country of a passionate advocate for the underdog. And certainly, the video footage of Wiener pugnaciously defending Obamacare and other progressive causes in Congress and on TV, you get the feeling that, yes, let's do this.

MONSTERS VS ALIENS - nothing special

MONSTERS VS ALIENS is a rather didactic, sporadically funny CGI animated film from DREAMWORKS - the studio that brought you SHREK. In contrast to SHREK, the incessant pop-culture references have been toned down, as have the fart jokes. Indeed, this movie makes a stab at being sweet and relying on old-fashioned physical humour in the manner of PIXAR movies. What hasn't changed is the classic DREAMWORKS didactisim. If SHREK is all about not being superficial and having self-esteem, MONSTERS VS ALIENS reads as a proto-feminist tract on female self-empowerment. Now, I'm the last person to object to such material, but it should at least be leavened by a steady stream of jokes. And on that score, MONSTERS VS ALIENS is well behind MONSTERS INC or THE INCREDIBLES, if not as out and out dull as BOLT 3D.

Reese Witherspoon is typically charming and engaging as Susan - a woman transformed in size and strength when hit by a meteor. She is sequestered by the government with other monsters, renamed Ginormica and asked to take-on an alien invasion by Gallaxhar, who covets her new powers. The movie is about Susan learning to embrace her strength and not to underestimate herself. It's also about her dumping her callow boyfriend (Paul Rudd) who can't cope with dating a woman who is more famous and powerful.

Where the movie does well is in its set-piece action sequences. I also loved Seth Rogen, Hugh Laurie and Will Arnett as the Monsters; Rainn Wilson as Gallaxhar and, most of all, Kiefer Sutherland as General W.R.Monger. I was less impressed by Stephen Colbert as President Hathaway (although that may have been due to his part being under-written - the scene where the President greets the alien probe is painfully unfunny.) But my biggest criticism is that the movie's moral message was just very heavy-handed and got in the way of the fun.

Finally, a quick word on the increased use of 3D. This movie uses 3D in the old fashioned "stuff coming out of the screen at you" manner rather than the pretentious "immersive" technique used in BOLT. I'm not convinced that either add anything to the movie-going experience. Rather, aren't we all convinced that it's just a cynical ploy to foil the pirates? The only recent movie I've seen where 3D actually enhanced the experience was Gil Kennan's brilliant MONSTER HOUSE.

MONSTERS VS ALIENS is on release in on global release.

I.O.U.S.A - Justifiably overlooked DVD of the month

I.O.U.S.A. is a poorly made, poorly argued, poorly illustrated documentary about a serious issue, the US public debt. In a nutshell, the issue is this: prudence dictates that a government should only spend (on social security, building roads, fighting wars) as much as it earns (raising taxes). This is a balanced-budget. But, for centuries, governments have borrowed to spend and run up a "public debt". It's the equivalent of taking out a mortgage, except that, being the US, supposedly the most financially secure country in the world, the mortgage payments are very cheap. Over the past decade, the US government has taken the equivalent of a massive mortgage from China and Japan. The difference is that whereas you and I pay back our own mortgage, when the government takes out a mortgage, it's the future generations who pay through higher taxes. Now, the borrowing can still be justified if the money is spent on things that make the country more productive and thus ease the burden on future generations - stuff like building roads. (The equivalent of investing in a house and building equity - so long as you don't buy at an over-inflated price!) But if the government incurs long-run debt just to spend on frivolous stuff like cash hand-outs (the equivalent of mortgage equity withdrawal used to buy a new stereo) it's less justifiable. Moreover, as with a household, the government can take on so much debt that they risk defaulting. Historically, it was unthinkable that the US would default because, hey, it was super financially secure! The documentary argues that this isn't the case any more. To my mind this is a bit of a straw man to argue against. What would be more likely to happen, though still highly unlikely, is that the US would have to pay more for its debt. This is like riskier households paying higher mortgage rates than secure households. After all, there is a good reason why China and Japan lent so much money to the US. US debt is seen as a "safe haven" asset - there are few safer places to put your money. I mean, think about, would you rather invest in the housing market or the equity market or lend to the UK government?! For instance, last October when Lehman Brothers went bust, everyone was rushing to lend to the US - for safety - despite the already large debt. Indeed, the US was paying an interest rate of zero! So much for pricing default risk.

Taking a strongly partisan stance, director Patrick Creadon frames this issue by following the leader of the lobby group, The Concord Coalition, as he tries to whip up public anger at the state of the country's finances. Admittedly, Creadon has a tough job. The lobbyist is not particularly charismatic, and the subject he is tackling is complicated and dry. But, having seen Al Gore basically make a powerpoint presentation interesting, we know it can be done. It's hard to know what someone would think who had never considered this issue. Would they be entertained and educated? Given that my day job focuses heavily on this subject, I found the substance of the film to be poorly argued, trivialised and ill-presented. The interview snippet with Warren Buffett is short and unexciting and footage of Alan Greenspan scarce. The documentary also betrays partisanship in the kind of economic assumptions it makes, and thus, the kind of political stance it leans towards. If you really want to know more about this topic, you'd do better to start here.

I.O.U.S.A. played Sundance 2008 and was released in the US last summer and in the UK last November. It is available on DVD.

THE LOVE GURU - not quite good enough

Here's the thing. I don't find dick and fart jokes particularly funny. (This isn't judgmental - just a a matter of taste). Nor do I find comedians putting on ethnic accents at the cutting edge of humour: Peter Sellars had that down decades ago. Having said all that, I love WAYNE'S WORLD and the first AUSTIN POWERS movie. They were such warm-hearted joyful pastiches of genre-movies, I could overlook the occasional crude joke. Mike Myers' latest movie, THE LOVE GURU, tilts the balance firmly in favour of the crude and away from the thoughtful spoof. That's fine and if you like that kind of humour, as many of the people in the cinema I was in last night did, you'll have a really good times. The litmus test is this: is the idea of two lychees wrapped in pastry to look like balls funny to you? If so, go forth and enjoy!

If you don't find that funny, as I didn't, is there enough in this film to keep you satisfied? My answer is wishy-washy. I can't say I'd want to watch THE LOVE GURU again, and I did cringe every time Ben Kingsley portrayed a cross-eyed Indian guru. (Has Ganndhi come to this?!) The running joke using Marishka Hargitay's name may not play in the UK and Justin Timberlake is definitely worth more than his cameo as a camp Quebecois hockey player. And the scene where the trainee gurus joust with urine covered mops was truly tragic.

But there are a handful of genuine laughs in this movie, and I had an okay time with it. The basic idea is that Mike Myers is a LA based celebrity Guru, always striving to be bigger than Deepak Chopra. If Guru Pitka can reunite an ice-hockey star and his wife in time to restore his game and win the championship, the Guru will appear on Oprah securing his position as number one Guru. Pitka has a bunch of risible self-help techniques, signified by trade-marked acronyms, and the titles of all his books ARE funny. The early sight gag of the motorised cushion is also brilliant. I even liked the Bollywood song-and-dance number spoofs with Jessica Alba.

Still, as funny as the soft spoofery was, I couldn't help but think that THE LOVE GURU would've worked better as a SNL sketch. And, if truth be told, the funniest thing in it IS like a SNL sketch - Stephen Colbert's satire on sports commentators was sharper and edgier than anything Myers brought to the table.

THE LOVE GURU was released earlier this year in the USA, Australia and Israel. It is currently on release in Iceland, Italu and the UK. It opens later in August in Singapore, Sweden, Finland, Norway and Turkey. It opens in September in Belgium, the Netherlands, Venezuela and France. It opens in October in France, Germany, Austria and Spain.